By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

BEC’s former executive chairman has slammed his successor’s meeting with the private sector as “hot air and elementary rhetoric”, telling this newspaper: “I was most unimpressed.”

Leslie Miller told Tribune Business that he left last week’s breakfast meeting between Pam Hill, Bahamas Power & Light’s (BPL) new chief executive, and Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC) members, “saddened”.

He argued that BPL and its manager, PowerSecure International, were offering no new solutions or anything that Bahamians could not have done.

Mr Miller, who has embarked on something of a ‘one-man crusade’ to convince Bahamians that the BPL deal is bad for the country, said: “I have never seen such elementary stuff.

“It was an insult to me. It was a gross insult. I got up and left. I could only tell the Bahamian people that I wish them luck for the future. I was most unimpressed. I saw nothing that we are spending money for, nothing at all, and it tore through my heart. I just wish this country luck. Only Christ can save us.”

The media was not invited to the breakfast meeting with Ms Hill, but Mr Miller said: “You didn’t miss a thing”. BPL had scheduled a press conference late last month to discuss its business plan, but that was postponed ‘until further notice’.

BPL and PowerSecure’s first four months in charge of BEC’s operating assets have already seen many of the outages, blackouts and energy supply inconsistencies that occurred under the previous structure.

Mr Miller now appears to be capitalising on this to argue that he, and the former Board, had all the solutions, unlike BPL and its foreign, private sector manager.

He told Tribune Business: “Our target was that this month Bahamians would have been paying no more than $0.26 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity and there would be no rate increase. There was going to be a dramatic rate decrease.

“We were also going to secure a long-term contract for our fuel, which hasn’t been done yet by this new company. I feel like an inferior human being as a Bahamian when I listened to what I heard. It was just hot air and elementary rhetoric that I heard.

“They are not bringing a single thing to the table that we are not except, that we are Bahamians and they are foreigners,” Mr Miller added. “I was very saddened. I wish I had not gone to that meeting. I might have had a different view. I had a sickness in my stomach after that.

“That was extremely painful for me because I know that with the calibre of people we had on our Board, if we had been allowed, no company could have done anything close to what we were going to do.”

Mr Miller said he and the former Board had managed to save BEC, and the Bahamian people,. more than $20-$30 million during their three-and-a-half years in charge.

“We were ready to take BEC to the next level and take the burden off the backs of Bahamians. We were going to put new engines out at Clifton that were going to save us $120 million,” he argued.

“There is nothing they could think of doing that we were not doing. When you talk about smart metering we were already spending $3 million on incorporating that system, but we were doing it incrementally.

“They [BPL and PowerSecure] are not bringing one single iota to the table that we were not doing ourselves. It’s a slap in the face to every Bahamian as far as I am concerned, and especially the Board that we had assembled. It makes me feel bad to say that I’m a Bahamian and I’m proud. That went to the core of my being and as a Bahamian born in this country.”

PowerSecure signed a five-year management services agreement with the Government to run BPL, the Bahamas Electricity Corporation’s (BEC) newly-created operating subsidiary, on February 9.

Then, on February 25, PowerSecure announced that the Atlanta-based utility giant, Southern Company, would acquire it for $431 million, with PowerSecure becoming a become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Southern Company.

Jeff Wallace, BPL’s first chief executive, resigned suddenly in March for ‘personal reasons’. Ms Hill, who most recently served as vice-president of retail sales support at Exelon Corporation, a Fortune 150 energy company headquartered in Chicago, was appointed as his replacement.